Whatever happens in Saturday's FA Cup final, enjoy the three o'clock kick-off. It could be something to tell the grandchildren about.

The chances are that the match between Manchester City and Stoke City will be the last of its kind to kick off at 3pm on a Saturday, a tradition linking the 2010-11 finalists to Wanderers (a team of former public school boys) and the Royal Engineers, who contested the very first final at Kennington Oval in 1872. From next year, the match is likely to start at 5.15pm, a time when all football fans were once buttering toast or driving home to the strains of Sports Report.

Next week the Football Association will announce the results of a review set in motion by Ian Watmore, during his brief spell as chief executive, and aimed at refreshing the competition, driven by the desire to make it more attractive to a new main sponsor – the E.On deal ends this year – and to increase the possible financial yield from a deal for the domestic television rights that must be negotiated before the current contract with ITV and ESPN expires next year.

A number of radical suggestions – including regionalising and seeding the draw, scrapping replays altogether and holding a round in midweek – are unlikely to be put forward for ratification by the FA Council. Those that may be presented for immediate adoption include the removal of a rule stipulating a minimum ticket price, in order to attract more young spectators, and some form of regulation to prevent clubs lowering the status of the competition by playing weakened teams – although goodness knows how that could be effectively implemented.

Perhaps the forward-thinkers at the FA should go the whole hog and copy English cricket's governing body, which now holds the ceremonial opening match of the season between the MCC and the county champions – for so long a fixture at Lord's – in Abu Dhabi, where the money, if not the pitch, is greener. An FA Cup final in the desert: why not, when so much has already been done to undermine the precious traditions of world football's oldest knockout competition?

Precious, yes, but clearly not priceless. Like everything in modern sport, the change of kick-off time will be made to suit the requirements of television. Matches now start at all sorts of times and on all sorts of days, an acknowledgement that the benefits of the tradition of simultaneous action are unquantifiable and cannot be turned into cash. Even in the case of the FA Cup final, the great paymaster's cold-eyed scheduling experts compute that 3pm finds too many people at Bluewater, Meadowhall or the Metrocentre, participating in the real national sport. So a cherished institution must be modified to suit society's changing patterns.

It is 12 years since the first foundation stone was removed from the Cup's historic edifice. The principle of the involvement of all eligible teams was destroyed by the decision to persuade Manchester United to skip the competition in order to take part in Fifa's Club World Championship, in the vain hope of strengthening England's bid to host the 2006 World Cup. Thus the FA was seen to be voluntarily lowering the value of its own previously sacrosanct competition. The most recent piece of demolition, prompted by the requirement to leave the Wembley pitch two clear weeks between English football's showpiece final and the European Cup climax on 28 May, is the decision to play a handful of Premier League matches at lunchtime on Saturday – and since a draw in one of them would give Manchester United their record-breaking 19th championship, Sunday's back-page headlines are likely to be shared, at best.

The Premier League could easily have played all this weekend's matches a day later, thus allowing the FA Cup its 24 hours in the spotlight, including the once-unique extended buildup that has itself been devalued by all Sky's hyped-up Super Sundays. But then it could also have agreed to the sensible suggestion to give a Champions League place to the Cup winners, thus providing a guaranteed boost to the tournament while creating the interesting possibility of introducing fresh faces to European competition. But the Premier League, having been waved into existence by the FA 20 years ago, now gives nothing away, to the extent of callously denying oxygen to a competition that provided delight to generation after generation of football fans and the public at large.

Until the Premier League accepts that what is good for the FA Cup is good for English football, no amount of well-intentioned tinkering is likely to restore its standing.